NEW ORLEANS – No, Carmelo Anthony does not think he is going to be traded by the Knicks, despite a disastrous first-half of the season that has seen his team start 20-32, 2.5 games out of a playoff spot.

“I don’t even pay attention to it,” Anthony said. “I don’t think there is no way possible I will be traded. I don’t think they are considering me being traded. Unless you hearing something I am not. … If they feel like they want to get rid of me, I feel like we would have had that conversation already. I know for a fact I am not being traded.”

So that is the good news for Anthony, who is in his fourth season with the Knicks after strong-arming a trade from the Nuggets in 2011. But for the Knicks, the news might not be so good. Anthony will be a free agent this summer, and though the assumption has long been that he would re-sign to stay in New York, he did not commit to that on Friday.

In fact, Anthony left open the possibility that the Knicks’ awful start to the season—especially in light of how well last year’s 54-win season went—would affect his free-agent decision this summer.

“I will evaluate that when the time comes,” Anthony said. “I didn’t expect the first half of the season to go how it is going, coming off last season, I was expecting us to take another step forward. Obviously, we took some steps backwards. I will evaluate that when the time comes.”

Anthony has never played for a team with a losing record in his career, and it is doubtful that, even if the Knicks make the postseason, they would finish above .500. That’s been tough for Anthony to swallow, but he has grown thick skin, he said.

“Body armor,” he said, laughing. “You got to have that body armor on. You got to build a wall around you and just take it. A lot of times, people go through stuff they’re not ready for. Me, I wasn’t ready for this season and the way this season is going, as far as all the things that come along with it. But I have braced myself for that.

"Nobody can tell me from their own experience how to deal with my own experience I am going through it, it is a learning curve for me. But I prepared myself mentally for a lot of the stuff that is going on by not reading it or listening to it, not feeding into it, but just focusing on what I need to do to make myself better and make my team better.”